i’ve been working on a few tracks in 2.5 and went to see if they’ll open in 2.0 on another comp. no dice.
after the beta expires how long am I going to be sitting with inaccessible files? or does 2.1 open 2.5 currently?
Don’t worry, before it expires there will be either another beta, or of course a final version. Final versions don’t expire.
It’s just there so people don’t get lazy and keep using buggy betas after the final is out I guess 
Renoise 2.1 songs will load in Renoise 2.5.
Renoise 2.5 songs will not load in Renoise 2.1 or any other earlier version. This has always been the case: songs are backwards compatible, but not forwards compatible.
By the time the beta version expires, you should already be using either:
a ) a newer beta version which will expire later
b ) the official/final version of 2.5 which does not expire
… so in either case you should not have any problems with inaccessible files.
( edit… Johann beat me to it! 
)
Just to add:using trickery in the song.xml to fool 2.1 (downgrading the songversion number) it is loading an old song won’t help you out this time, there are things really written differently in 2.5 regarding pattern, sequencer and automation data, etc.
Either Renoise will crash or you will have to recover a lot of parameters and settings to fix your song back into an older version.
This NEVER works. We do have such version numbers for a good reason. If it did worked for you in the past, then it was plain luck (you did not used any features that changed for example).
thanks for the info people. glad to know it won’t be renoise affecting my deadlines.
I already de-installed 2.1 a week and a half ago 
you guys keep up with the updates and i’m gonna have to re-buy renoise in six months.